A magnetic bag is an abelian approximation to a large number of coincident SU(2) BPS monopoles. In this paper we consider magnetic bags in hyperbolic space and derive their Nahm transform from the large charge limit of the discrete Nahm equation for hyperbolic monopoles. An advantage of studying magnetic bags in hyperbolic space, rather than Euclidean space, is that a range of exact charge N hyperbolic monopoles can be constructed, for arbitrarily large values of N, and compared with the magnetic bag approximation. We show that a particular magnetic bag (the magnetic disc) provides a good description of the axially symmetric N-monopole. However, an abelian magnetic bag is not a good approximation to a roughly spherical N-monopole that has more than N zeros of the Higgs field. We introduce an extension of the magnetic bag that does provide a good approximation to such monopoles and involves a spherical non-abelian interior for the bag, in addition to the conventional abelian exterior.
We discuss gravitational magnetic bags, i.e. clusters of large number of monopoles in presence of gravitational effects. Physics depends on the dimensionless ratio between the vev of the Higgs field at infinity and the Planck mass. We solve the equations for the gravitational bags, and study the transition from monopole to black hole. The critical coupling for this transition is $v_{cr} = \sqrtπ/(4 \sqrt{G})$, and it is larger than that of a single 't Hooft-Polyakov monopole. We investigate in detail the black-hole limit.
There has been some recent interest in the study of non-abelian BPS monopoles in the limit of large magnetic charge. Most investigations have used a magnetic bag approximation, in which spherical symmetry is assumed within an abelian description. In particular, this approach has been used to suggest the existence of two types of magnetic bag, with differing distributions of the zeros of the Higgs field, together with multi-layer structures, containing several magnetic bags. This paper is concerned with the analogous situation of abelian BPS vortices in the hyperbolic plane, in the limit of lar…
We explore the characteristics of spherical bags made of large numbers of BPS magnetic monopoles. There are two extreme limits. In the Abelian bag, $N$ zeros of the Higgs field are arranged in a quasiregular lattice on a sphere of radius $R_{\rm cr} \sim N/v$, where $v$ is the Higgs vacuum expectation value. The massive gauge fields of the theory are largely confined to a thin shell at this radius that separates an interior with almost vanishing magnetic and Higgs fields from an exterior region with long-range Coulomb magnetic and Higgs fields. In the other limiting case, which we term a non-A…
Skyrmions are particle-like topological excitations, studied in various condensed matter systems and models of high-energy physics (HEP). They occur as stable spin textures in certain planar magnetic materials and as configurations in chiral nematic liquid crystals, having been originally proposed as model of atomic nuclei. Since magnetic Skyrmions can be accelerated with a current, they have the potential to encode bits in low-power magnetic storage devices. Drawing on techniques from HEP, we demonstrate that magnetic and liquid crystal Skyrmions interact like orientation dependent, localised…
By analogy with the multi-vortices, we show that also multi-monopoles become magnetic bags in the large n limit. This simplification allows us to compute the spectrum and the profile functions by requiring the minimization of the energy of the bag. We consider in detail the case of the magnetic bag in the limit of vanishing potential and we find that it saturates the Bogomol'nyi bound and there is an infinite set of different shapes of allowed bags. This is consistent with the existence of a moduli space of solutions for the BPS multi-monopoles. We discuss the string theory interpretation of o…
A detailed study of vortices is presented in Ginzburg-Landau (or Abelian Higgs) models with two complex scalars (order parameters) assuming a general U(1)$\times$U(1) symmetric potential. Particular emphasis is given to the case, when only one of the scalars obtains a vacuum expectation value (VEV). It is found that for a significantly large domain in parameter space vortices with a scalar field condensate in their core (condensate core, CC) coexist with Abrikosov-Nielsen-Olesen (ANO) vortices. Importantly CC vortices are stable and have lower energy than the ANO ones. Magnetic bags or giant v…
We consider the effect of the (heavy) fundamental quarks on the low energy effective Lagrangian description of nonabelian gauge theories in 2+1 dimensions. We show that in the presence of the fundamental charges, the magnetic $Z_N$ symmetry becomes local. We construct the effective Lagrangian representing this local symmetry in terms of magnetic vortex fields, and discuss its physical consequences. We show that the finite energy states described by this Lagrangian have distinct bag-like structure. The point-like quarks are confined to the region of space where the value of the vortex field is …
Recently a Nahm transform has been discovered for magnetic bags, which are conjectured to arise in the large n limit of magnetic monopoles with charge n. We interpret these ideas using string theory and present some partial proofs of this conjecture. We then extend the notion of bags and their Nahm transform to higher gauge theories and arbitrary domains. Bags in four dimensions conjecturally describe the large n limit of n self-dual strings. We show that the corresponding Basu-Harvey equation is the large n limit of an equation describing n M2-branes, and that it has a natural interpretation …
It has been known for 30 years that 't Hooft-Polyakov monopoles of charge Q greater than one cannot be spherically symmetric. 5 years ago, Bolognesi conjectured that, at some point in their moduli space, BPS monopoles can become approximately spherically symmetric in the high Q limit. In this note we determine the sense in which this conjecture is correct. We consider an SU(2) gauge theory with an adjoint scalar field, and numerically find configurations with Q units of magnetic charge and a mass which is roughly linear in Q, for example in the case Q=81 we present a configuration whose energy…
Spherical clusters of SU(2) BPS monopoles are investigated here. A large class of monopole solutions is found using an abelian approximation, where the clusters are spherically symmetric, although exact solutions cannot have this symmetry precisely. Monopole clusters generalise the Bolognesi magnetic bag solution of the same charge, but they are always larger. Selected density profiles give structures analogous to planets of uniform density, and galaxies with a density decaying as the inverse square of the distance from the centre. The Bolognesi bag itself has features analogous to a black hol…
The motion of charged particles in spacetimes containing a submanifold of constant positive or negative curvature is considered, with the electromagnetic tensor proportional to the volume two-form form of the submanifold. In the positive curvature case, this describes spherically symmetric spacetimes with a magnetic monopole, while in the negative curvature case, it is a hyperbolic spacetime with magnetic field uniform along hyperbolic surfaces. Constants of motion are found by considering Poisson brackets defined on a phase space with gauge-covariant momenta. In the spherically-symmetric case…
As demonstrated by Chernodub, vacuum in a strong magnetic field behaves as a periodic Abrikosov vortex lattice in a type-II superconductor. We investigate electromagnetic behavior of vacuum in this state. Since superconductivity is realized along the axis of magnetic field only, strong anisotropy of the vacuum dielectric tensor is observed. The diagonal components of the tensor are positive in the x and y directions perpendicular to the magnetic field, and negative in the z direction along the field. As a result, vacuum behaves as a hyperbolic metamaterial medium. If the magnetic field is cons…
We exhibit a Hamiltonian formulation, both for electromagnetism and gravitation, in which it is not required that the Bondi "news" vanish, but only that the incoming news be equal to the outgoing ones. This requirement is implemented by defining the fields on a two-sheeted hyperbolic surface, which we term "the hourglass". It is a spacelike deformation of the complete lightcone. On it one approaches asymptotically (null) past and future infinity while remaining at a fixed (hyperbolic) time, by going to large spatial distances on its two sheets. The Hamiltonian formulation and -- in particular …
The moduli spaces of hyperbolic monopoles are naturally fibred by the monopole mass, and this leads to a nontrivial mass dependence of the holomorphic data (spectral curves, rational maps, holomorphic spheres) associated to hyperbolic multi-monopoles. In this paper, we obtain an explicit description of this dependence for general hyperbolic monopoles of magnetic charge two. In addition, we show how to compute the monopole mass of higher charge spectral curves with tetrahedral and octahedral symmetries. Spectral curves of euclidean monopoles are recovered from our results via an infinite-mass l…
We consider the problem of sound propagation in a wind. We note that the rays, as in the absence of a wind, are given by Fermat's principle and show how to map them to the trajectories of a charged particle moving in a magnetic field on a curved space. For the specific case of sound propagating in a stratified atmosphere with a small wind speed we show that the corresponding particle moves in a constant magnetic field on the hyperbolic plane. In this way we give a simple `straightedge and compass' method to estimate the intensity of sound upwind and downwind. We construct Mach envelopes for mo…
We present a systematic study of accelerating cosmologies obtained from M/string theory compactifications of hyperbolic spaces with time-varying volume. A set of vacuum solutions where the internal space is a product of hyperbolic manifolds is found to give qualitatively the same accelerating four-dimensional FLRW universe behavior as a single hyperbolic space. We also examine the possibility that our universe is a hyperbolic space and provide exact Milne type solutions, as well as intersecting S-brane solutions. When both the usual 4D spacetime and the m-dimensional internal space are hyperbo…
Starting from the geometrical interpretation of integrable vortices on two-dimensional hyperbolic space as conical singularities, we explain how this picture can be expressed in the language of Cartan connections, and how it can be lifted to the double cover of three-dimensional Anti-de Sitter space viewed as a trivial circle bundle over hyperbolic space. We show that vortex configurations on the double cover of AdS space give rise to solutions of the Dirac equation minimally coupled to the magnetic field of the vortex. After stereographic projection to (2+1)-dimensional Minkowski space we obt…
Magnetic monopoles in hyperbolic space are in correspondence with certain algebraic curves in mini-twistor space, known as spectral curves, which are in turn in correspondence with rational maps between Riemann spheres. Hyperbolic monopoles correspond to circle-invariant Yang-Mills instantons, with an identification of the monopole and instanton numbers, providing the curvature of hyperbolic space is tuned to a value specified by the asymptotic magnitude of the Higgs field. In previous work, constraints on ADHM instanton data have been identified that provide a non-canonical realization of the…
In a paper of Braam and Austin, $\text{SU}(2)$ magnetic monopoles in hyperbolic space $H^{3}$ were shown to be the same as solutions to matrix-valued difference equations called the discrete Nahm equations. Here, I discover the $(N-1)$-interval discrete Nahm equations and show that their solutions are equivalent to $\text{SU}(N)$ hyperbolic monopoles. These discrete time evolution equations on an interval feature a jump in matrix dimensions at certain points in the evolution, which are given by the mass data of the corresponding monopole. I prove the correspondence with higher rank hyperbolic …
On a complete manifold, such as Euclidean 3-space or hyperbolic 3-space, the limit at infinity of the norm of the Higgs field is called the mass of the monopole. We show the existence, on hypebolic 3-space, of monopoles with given magnetic charge and arbitrary mass. Previously, aside from charge one monopoles, existence was known only for monopoles with integral mass (since these arise from U(1) invariant instantons on Euclidean 4-space). The method of proof is based on Taubes' gluing procedure, using well-separated, explicit, charge one monopoles. The analysis is carried out in a weighted Sob…
There are constructed exact solutions of the quantum-mechanical Dirac equation for a spin S=1/2 particle in Riemannian space of constant negative curvature, hyperbolic Lobachevsky space, in presence of an external magnetic field, analogue of the homogeneous magnetic field in the Minkowski space. A generalized formula for energy levels, describing quantization of the motion of the particle in magnetic field on the background of the Lobachevsky space geometry, has been obtained.
We study generalized electric/magnetic duality in Abelian gauge theory by combining techniques from locally covariant quantum field theory and Cheeger-Simons differential cohomology on the category of globally hyperbolic Lorentzian manifolds. Our approach generalizes previous treatments using the Hamiltonian formalism in a manifestly covariant way and without the assumption of compact Cauchy surfaces. We construct semi-classical configuration spaces and corresponding presymplectic Abelian groups of observables, which are quantized by the CCR-functor to the category of $C^*$-algebras. We demons…
